Thursday, 30 May 2013

The dark side of El Rocío: horses ridden to death

Pilgrimage leftovers

EL ROCÍO (Huelva) A petition is doing the rounds, which asks the Ministry of Agriculture (and other stuff) to stop ... read what the actual petition says: "Several dozen horses die every year during El Rocío (annual 'religious' pilgrimage), from exhaustion and thirst. The numbers speak for themselves: 25 in 2008, 23 in 2009, 11 in 2012, 23 in 2013. The excuses run from 'if you give them water when you leave, they can sweat and die from a cold', to 'whoever rides them to death from exhaustion has never had anything to do with horses before'. Some of them die from having to walk for miles without a break - but at the end of the day, they all die because there is no law that obliges anyone to treat an animal as the living beings they are, and not as toys to be used until they break." (Strangely, this thing about toys is what last year's and this year's J.A.W.S. Christmas campaign will be about.) Please share this item with everyone you know.